A gift of a flowering African violet

I've given flowering, potted African violets as small token gifts for friend's birthdays, or when someone needed  a bit of cheering up, or even as a thinking-of-you gift following the passing of a friend's loved one. They don't cost me much of anything. Just soil, a pot, a plastic wrap and ribbon, plus my time and love.

I like to keep a few of these growing, hopefully having one at all times that could be flowering, ready at hand for a gift. But my supply dwindled to just the one, "mother plant".

Time to begin another set. This past October, I filled a 4-cell seed starter with soil. Then I plucked 4 leaves with stems from my mother plant, and inserted into the soil. I kept the soil damp, watering a coupled of times per week. I lost one leaf entirely, but 3 remain, with one having sprouted new leaves already.

It usually takes about 12 weeks for a plantlet (the grouping of small leaves) to develop from the time of cutting. I'll be keeping an eye on the other 2 leaves, hoping for another couple of plants.

This one, with the baby leaves attached, will be ready to pot up into its own pot in about 3 or 4 weeks. I want it to become strong and healthy before changing pots, but not wait so long that the plant has outgrown it's space and water supply.

It can take 6-9 months to go from baby plant to flowering one. But I have patience.

(Some experts recommend trimming 1/3 off the initial leaf at time of cutting. I've never done this, and still have success with propagation.)

Have you experimented with propagating plants? There's a method for propagating lilacs with just leaves. But I've never tried it, and am hoping to get more information on this method sometime.

No hot dog bun? No problem!

The only hot dog buns we ever have, nowadays, are homemade ones. That's not just a cost situation, but commercial hot dog buns often have stuff in them that I can't eat. So, homemade it is.

But I don't always plan ahead and make buns, or my freezer stash of homemade buns has been depleted. So, what to do? What to do?

We have 3 solutions. One, was my mother's favorite. I'm sure this is the universal, substitute hot dog bun. (You remember these, too?!) A slice of soft, fluffy sandwich bread, the fluffier, the better. Something like Wonder Bread. Lay the hot dog on a diagonal, from corner to corner of the slice of bread. Pull the remaining corners up, and you have a wrap-around, slice of bread for a bun. This works just fine, and I often do this for myself, if heating myself a hot dog. But frankly, as a kid, I always felt that this was somehow inferior.

The second solution also works in a pinch, but is better suited for homemade bread, as you need it unsliced. I slice a double wide slice of bread. Cut in half, into two long rectangles. Then make a slit partially through the bread, on the cut edge, about where a cut would have been made to make two slices out of the one.

You have something like a hot dog bun. This works best with fresh and fluffy homemade bread, and not dry homemade bread. The one here was on bread that was a few days old, and didn't hold together very well. Can be a solution, but not my family's favorite.

The third solution is one I use for many types of buns, including sloppy Joe buns and slider burger buns. I use biscuit dough. It's just a basic scratch biscuit dough recipe. If I make half a recipe (a mini batch using 1 cup of flour), I have just enough dough for 5 or 6 hot dogs. (Or, 5 or 6 sloppy Joe buns, or, 10 slider buns.)

I roll the dough out into a large circle, about 1/4-inch thick. I score the circle into 5 or 6 wedges. I lay 1 hot dog on each wedge, nearest the wide edge of the triangle. Then simply roll up, as for a crescent roll. Place seam side down on a baking sheet, and bake the wrapped dogs at 400 F degrees for about 15 to 17 minutes (until the biscuit wrap is baked). If you're using fat sausages, you may want to preheat the sausage in the microwave or in a skillet, first, so that it will be thoroughly cooked through.

One daughter especially loves these. When her sister heard I was making these last Friday for a quick supper, she insisted that I make an extra, for the daughter who loves them so much. (That daughter had an evening out at the opera, with one of her classes, and would miss dinner. The lucky girl!)

Basically, this is a homemade version of the Pillsbury crescent roll, hot dog wraps. But about a buck cheaper. Sometimes, I add a slice of cheese on top of the biscuit dough, just before placing the hot dog on and rolling. Other times, I spread the inside dough with prepared mustard, for extra flavor. As they're not true hot dog buns, with an opening for pouring on the condiments, my family enjoys dipping them in ketchup or BBQ sauce.

That's it! Quick and easy supper for a Friday evening.

Does your family have something favorite for Friday supper?